~ A site for my creative writing endeavors, writing prompt responses, and experimentation.

Muslim Friends

I have Muslim friends. I have Jewish friends. I have Christian friends. If you were to poll all my friends, acquaintances, and colleagues I suspect you would find people of every religion and non-religion. Mostly you wouldn’t know what religion they are or aren’t, though some are more obvious than others.

For reasons described in a previous post (Facebook in Translation), I have a broad worldview. That is one of the reasons I’ve become less tolerant of bigotry. People are people no matter what their background, and that background is a function of the vagaries of birth more than anything else. No one chooses their nationality; it is “chosen” by our parents, most of whom didn’t get much of a say in it themselves. People do sometimes change their religion, but mostly people remain through life the religion they were taught in youth.

I cry when I think of someone like Donald Trump. The man was lucky enough to be born as a white man into a wealthy family in New York City, grew up with largely unearned and unequaled privilege, was handed a real estate business and his Daddy’s contacts, and despite being an incredibly poor money manager remains wealthy to this day (mostly by leveraging other people’s money). Had Trump been born into less advantageous circumstances we most likely would never have ever heard of him.

Instead we have a man well-known as a bloviating buffoon with a near pathological propensity for lying. As he’s flirted with politics his racist and flagrantly bigoted side has become more noticeable to the masses. Naturally he found a home in the Republican party.

As an independent historian focused on Abraham Lincoln, the blatant bigotry of the Republican party has striking similarities to the antebellum South. Prior to the Civil War the wealthy plantation owners largely controlled politics in this country. Back then they were mostly Democrats. They went to war to protect and expand the enslavement of men, women, and children of color. Today, those racists are Republicans. During the civil rights era most of the bigotry-driven Democrats switched over to the Republican party, which is why the KKK, white supremacists, “tea partiers,” and others who want to protect white privilege and deny Constitutional rights to women, minorities, immigrants, gays, veterans, the elderly, and other Americans all find themselves comfortable in today’s Republican party.

The Republican party is no longer the party of Lincoln. It has become the party of bigots.

Not all Republicans are bigots, of course, just as not all Democrats are not bigots. As my interactions with people have broadened, so has my realization that there are some horrid people out there. Some of those horrid people are Muslims. Some of them are Jewish. Because most of the people living in the United States are Christian, most of the horrid people in this country are Christian. But…and I must emphasize this emphatically…most people are not horrid. In fact, most people are incredibly kind and liberal in their interactions with others.

The number of people who are good people far outweighs the number of horrid ones. Sometimes it seems the opposite but that’s only because the loudest voices drown out the modest ones.

Which gets me to my point. We must all speak up against bigotry. Not just against Donald Trump. He represents the arrogant loud end of the spectrum but he has led the Republican polls for so long because he represents exactly the overwhelmingly bigoted base of the Republican party. The rest of the Republican candidates for president are not so overt, but their words and their proposals are not particularly different. The fact that all Republican candidates have chosen to pander to the fears of their most bigoted, anti-science, and uninformed members is no less dangerous to Americans and the world than the more bloviate Trump. The Republican party has resurrected the “Know-Nothing” party of the 1850s, which sought to deny rights to non-whites, Catholics, the Irish, and others that didn’t fit their narrow vision of “the right kind of American.”

Of course, we must speak up against bigotry from Democrats too. And Independents. And family and neighbors and co-workers and people on the street. To tweak Abraham Lincoln’s famous comment about slavery: “If bigotry is not wrong, nothing is wrong.”

The United States was built on the premise that all men are created equal and endowed with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That “all men” includes ALL men, women, and children, whether those men, women, and children are white, black, Asian, Latino, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Republican, Democratic, Independent, rich, poor, middle class, working class, and every other category you can pigeon-hole people into.

I’m proud to say that I have friends and acquaintances that span every demographic you could categorize. I’m prouder to say that most of the time I don’t even think about them as belonging to any category other than “friend.”

So you acknowledge that Trump is a profligate liar and bigot, which is of course the salient point of the post. None of us should put up with bigots, especially from the lead candidate for the Republican nomination for president. I’m sure you agree, right?

As for his money management, actual money managers have opined that Trump is a poor money manager, so your accusation is false and uninformed. Trump has declared bankruptcy on at least four occasions. He spends flagrantly and plays a high risk game more akin to stroking his ego than a serious investor. Investment advisers note that if he had simple invested the money Daddy gave him in the S&P 500 he could have reached about the same level of wealth he is now despite all his risky actions. (e.g., http://www.vox.com/2015/9/2/9248963/donald-trump-index-fund) Other investment advisers say that his assets are a “messy hodgepodge” and not the “model of a prudent portfolio from a fiduciary stewardship standpoint.” (e.g., http://www.investmentnews.com/article/20150723/FREE/150729940/donald-trumps-investment-portfolio-a-messy-hodgepodge-advisers) In short, Trump is a poor manager who plays the game not for investment potential but for his egomaniacal need to be a celebrity.

By the way, I started with effectively nothing and yet am worth many more times than what I started with. By my calculation I’m a better money manager than Trump perhaps several hundred-fold. Using that as a baseline, that would make Trump not only a poor money manager but an abject failure at the game.

I’ve read some similar, apolitcal analyses of Trump’s wealth. In one case, it was observed that he could have done better having invested in a conservative money-market account. He’s also used kinds of bankruptcies not ordinarily available to people of lesser wealth. For him to portray himself as some kind of an “everyman” is patently laughable.

As you may have surmised from some of my earlier posts (some at another site), my family was once intimately involved in Republican politics. Perhaps I’m just too young to know better, but it seems to me that the party lost its message somewhere along the way. And perhaps in an effort to retrieve some kind of a following, it turned toward a purely emotional appeal to fear — a message bolstered by an America that seems to have no shortage of crazies with access to the means with which to lash out — at least a few of whom will fit into some convenient stereotype. But now, the proverbial chickens seem to have come home to roost.

Unfortunately, from the Bolsheviks to Daesh (and that’s what they should be called), fear is also the message of those who would seek to sway public opinion through the application of terror. Trump’s brand of nationalism is no different than that eschewed by men in brown shirts who terrorized their own neighbors in the name of righteous ignorance, and more people need to stand up and call it what is.

I wish you could hear the questions I’ve been getting asked of late — it’s become tiresome responding to people watching an American feeding-frenzy of ignorant fearfulness. “Is America really going to wall-off Canada?” “…deport 5% of its population?” “…register people by religious belief?” No candidate of any political association who won’t unequivocally distance his or her self from this kind of message should ever be taken seriously. And yet…

The bigotry of the Republican party should be an embarrassment to all Americans. The stoking of fear and xenophobia by Republicans is a disgrace. Trump is the most overtly bigoted but the entire party relies on it (and voter suppression) as their only hope in an increasingly diverse country. Right now the Democrats offer the most fiscally responsible proposals (and recent history). The Republican party must completely change before they can be allowed to – as last night’s debate made it clear – sit in a position to start yet another open-ended war and to take away the Constitutional rights of anyone they deem “not the right kind of American.”

I’m frustrated.

But then again, I also remain hopeful. This paranoid overstepping can, hopefully, lead to a realization of the dangers of bigotry and a new awakening of the “better angels of our nature.”

BTW, I was living in Brussels when Obama was first elected President. The Europeans were just as perplexed at what had happened to the United States that we attacked what some referred to as “the best hope on Earth” after Bush. Here we are again.

Lately made an effort to “tune out.” Traveling with a different “identity” is enlightening — interesting how differently I am received with a maroon passport. The rest of the world moves on whether or not America chooses to come along. Americans will just have to decide for themselves whether to move on as well, or to simply cling to an image of times that never really were.

I was thinking about this last night, while walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood in the dark without worry. Earlier, I had met a young lady from Los Angeles who was working at a clothing store (the luggage thing). She grew up in the US and spoke perfect English. She said she had no desire to return. Hmmm…

Very nice post David. I wonder if we are witnessing the end of the Republican Party. If Trump doesnt get the nomination and runs independently, that might happen. There must some conservatives who are not bigoted or insane, and the rest will go with Trump into a new quasi fascist nationalist party. I wonder when any of these candidates will address the treasonous actions going on in Oregon.

Unfortunately, the entire premise of the current Republican party is to embrace seclusion and delusion. Everything they do these days is designed to convince white bigots that they are being attacked by, well, all the rest of America. Rather than reach out to a broader coalition, they seek to block the votes of those who don’t like being discriminated against and energize the votes of a shrinking populace. The Republican party seeks short-term gain from bigotry and fear. Not too surprising from a party that lives and breathes for corporations and the 1%.

Why? Because it has worked for them. Because their most energized voters are bigots and delusionals instigated by Fox News into a frothy frenzy. Anything the black guy in the Oval Office favors is instantly evil, even it was something the Republican party had proposed themselves. No matter how obviously the deception, the poor white trash element will continue to vote Republican because they’ve convinced themselves (with Republican/Fox News prodding) that the only reason they aren’t rich is because the blacks, the gays, the broads, the [fill in bigot target here] are somehow keeping them from becoming rich. That kind of delusion doesn’t go away overnight.

Will the Republican party die? No. It will simply lose the presidency until it – by voter suppression, fearmongering, gerrymandering, and dishonesty – loses the House and Senate as well. Then it will reinvent itself and convince their voters that they never did any of what they’ve been doing. Yes, they, and we, are that (willfully) forgetful. At best we’ll see all the non-bigots become Democrats. I wouldn’t mind seeing a third party, but the system is set up to make a viable third party nothing more than a spoiler (think, Ralph Nader skimmed just enough votes to make George W. Bush president in 2000 instead of Al Gore, which is the fault of the liberals voting to destroy their own goals).

Will Trump run as an independent. No. If he doesn’t win the Republican nomination he will bloviate something akin to “I have a 10 (or 20 or 30, or whatever fabrication he invents that week) billion dollar business to run (and bankrupt, again)” and disappear back into his fantasy world where everybody loves him to his face and despises his buffoonishness behind his back. He’s been a boorish clown for decades and will be until he’s dead.

Is the Democratic party any better? Yes, absolutely and positively, in virtually every respect. Is the Democratic party always right (or even sometimes right)? No. Of course not. I would love to spend all my wasted time jumping on the Democrats for all the dumb things they do. Unfortunately, the Republicans have been so dishonest for so long that we can’t even try to have an honest discussion about different path options forward. It’s either heaven or hell with no reality in between. The Democrats play their role, but the dichotomy right now is the Republican party’s fault, 100%. This dishonesty damages every single American.